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Don’t Let the Empire Down

The phrase, “Loose Lips Might Sink Ships,” on the original poster was first used in 1942 by as a newspaper headline. It quickly spread to other mediums including the poster above (left). The Star Wars Franchise is, of course, popular right now because of recent installments as well as continued excitement about the films, making it a prime subject for parody propaganda.

The original phrase was a warning to Americans to always be on guard in order to prevent possible disclosure of any important information to any one who could be an enemy spy. This has been parodied by Cliff Chiang to fit the story of the original Star Wars trilogy where the Rebel Alliance destroys not one, but two separate “Death Star” space stations and many countless star ships. The same message is supposed to be getting across as the original poster, but in the case of the parody poster it means to not give the Rebels information about another ship or space station.

The posters are similar in several ways to make it obvious what the parody poster is a parody of. The first point of similarity is the cartoon like font of the words. This font is used is both posters to clearly draw attention to the similar messages of the posters. The text is also in the same places and broken up in the same way as the original poster on the parody.

There are other important points of similarity between the posters’ color scheme. The main focus of the original poster, other than the text, is the ship billowing smoke in the center, which also happens to be the darkest colored part of the poster in black, this is matched with the black glove of Darth Vader that is choking the man holding plans. The black color seems to be the representation of the enemy’s influence on what happens to the ship, in the original image, and the man, in the parody. The water in the original poster is a light blue which is a similar color to the man holding plans and paper in the parody picture. The man is representative of the people the message is aimed at, in this case soldiers or officers of the Empire. The man being choked is a warning of what could happen to someone who lets information slip.

The Posters are different as well to make the parody poster its own unique piece that is still referring to its “parent.” The posters have brightly colored backgrounds, but the background colors are not the same. The original background is red and the Star Wars parody is orange, but they are presented on the posters in the same way.